I like the sound of that policy -- for some courses, it would work fine. For other, there might be problem:
* Some courses are hard enough, and many undergraduates are undisciplined enough, that a lot of students would end up failing. Of course, when this happens, the professor gets a whole bunch of reviews back telling him that he taught badly.
* Sometimes exams aren't the best setting for evaluation.
i don’t see how that would skew the stats as it would affect only a few courses you take and you can still do decent and self study if the professor is crap.
My son had a required CS course at UC Berkeley taught by a professor who didnt want to deal with undergraduates. To discourage them he graded his exams more or less as follows: 5 points for getting an answer completely correct, no errors at all; -5 points for any error in the answer, no matter how trivial; 0 points for not answering. Not answering any question was probably a B, but there was such an uproar from the students that the class was turned into pass/fail. My son opted to take it the following semester from a different prof.
That's how a bunch of courses I attended and TAed did it. You needed to beat a specific rating averaged over your homework assignments to be allowed to take the exams. Occasionally caused really good students to fluke the last 1 or 2 assignments since they were sure to have qualified, but generally kept everyone doing them and allowed for failing occasionally (which is useful because students then are less motivated to try and hide their failure, which gives the TAs better feedback about progress and problems)
>In a recent post, Parrhesia suggested that course grades should be 100% determined by performance on a final exam—an exam that could be taken repeatedly, with the last attempt being the course grade
>[...]I suspect this proposal hasn’t seen much contact with people who’ve actually taught classes
This is how a fair number of classes at my university are graded. Particularly math classes are structured so that you could literally ignore the class for 3 months and then just show up and take the exam and that decides 100% of the grade. Some homework is available for bonus points, but it only contributes to going from a failing grade to passing. While retaking the exam to get a higher grade isn't technically part of the system they will let you do it if there is space.
The best class I ever took in uni had 3 examinations taken by all students simultaneously, with variations between each exam making cheating nearly impossible. There was no attendance taken, all course materials were posted online, and the only grading for the entire class was the exams. I showed up to 2 classes the entire semester yet still learned all of the material and obtained an A.
At least for certain STEM classes, I think this should be the norm.
My University had a policy of letting you retake things and take the new grade. In the modern world, I think you should be able to retake the tests and rely on MOOCs. I'm not at all a fan of allowing failure to pass or even average for a first attempt in a hard subject to pass. I had a few courses that I should have failed and I never revisited them because I got a B or even an A.. Today I am falsely educated in most of those subjects.
Yeah, and I also like your idea of every class being pass/fail. I'm sure I've heard of some colleges doing it but I haven't looked into whether it's considered to be an improvement. Also I wonder what the results would be in terms of norm-setting if this was done at Harvard or something next?
I could maybe see their point if it was just a really hard exam and only 10% happen to be able to pass it. But artificially restricting to 10% of the class is ridiculous. The goal should be to pass students that have the requisite knowledge, whatever the prof decides that should be. Judging only relative to peers is a lazy way for the prof to not have to make that distinction. It also creates a toxic environment.
I think this method of teaching works well if this lines up with how the students are evaluated. The students willingness to accept this form of teaching is entirely reliant on how they feel this will impact their final grade. That's why it's important to align your grading and evaluation style with your teaching style if this is what you expect from students. That way, they'll be more inclined to go with the flow knowing that it won't bite them on the other end when it's time to take a test.
Or just grade other work that doesn't require proctoring.
Personally, I removed exams entirely in the last courses I taught in Spring 2020, and it seemed to work out OK. I had no faith that the proctoring systems would catch everything, and I had no desire to inflict them on my students in any case.
The grade goes on your record, though. The time investment to complete the course with a satisfactory grade would negate the time I have to read the material.
I had a prof that did something like this. It was back in the 80s, so no internet. Instead, because it was a large class, he had to give the mid-terms to different parts of the class. He would make all the tests look similar, but with small differences. If the right wrong answers turned up, he would fail the student. (I hope that makes sense.)
At the end of the semester, he explained what was going on. The course was required for the degree (EE), you had to have a C or above to pass, and it was a bear. He said right out, the course was designed to cull the heard.
A few students were outraged. I'm not surprised by the reaction Merriam got. Speaking for myself, I was indifferent to what he had done, though I didn't speak up. I think he should ask the students that he determined hadn't cheated what they think.
> I definitely would have acted rationally, because I place very little value on getting to skip an exam or on proving a point about the grading system, and much more value on actually getting the education I paid for.
Do you mind explaining the thought process behind this? I find it to be quite a stretch to suggest that a 50 minute evaluation at the end of the semester would be such an integral component of the learning that occurs during a semester that foregoing it would jeopardize "getting the education I paid for."
And of course, those with legitimate complaints with the Prof simply drop the class a few days or weeks in, and never get a chance to fill out an evaluation...
Now that I think about that.. I did have a professor in my undergrad who held grades until the evaluations were done. Suffice to say, I regret the evaluation I gave.
My intro to Physics prof did this. First exam, average was like 35%. I was in top 3 at like 70%. He got into trouble because he also said no grading on curve and most of class complained to his dept head.
Indeed, but in my experience, students regard a problem as "meaningful" if and only if it will appear in the exam. Were they forced to work in a manner designed to stimulate their intellectual curiosity for the subject, many would complain that the course was too hard and the teaching methods were unfair, leading to fewer students enrolling for it. Low pass-rates and low take-up look bad, and the faculty administration would scrap the course.
> If most of the students did bad in the exam, the problem lies with the one factor in common: the professor.
Class distributions vary significantly. I TA'd elementary computer programming for seven quarters.[1] Some classes were more engaged, some less. My worst was a TR 3pm: a quarter of the students failed. My best was a summer course in which I taught without a computer (except for the labs): the room wasn't equipped, so I printed the slides and wrote on transparencies.
My N of 7 isn't significant (average grades ran from 72-82%, I think, and I don't know the standard deviation), but it's worth thinking about the problem more globally than your comment suggests. We often think of student grades statistically (work that curve!), but we rarely think about it with respect to a set of classes. It's likely that this professor has had classes that were very good and very bad and some that were in between.
Reflecting honestly on my own career on the other side of the desk, I was not a very good student. I studied to pass tests, not to learn. I got a degree because failing me would have looked bad for the institution, not because I was particularly deserving.
The humiliation of that experience turned me (I think and hope) into a life-long learner--and it informed my teaching in the classroom. Failure is one of the best teachers to those willing to learn her lessons.
[1] We team-taught occasionally and always team-graded the exams (one question or section, depending, per TA) to help level the grading. We had a department policy that failing the final exam meant failing the course. We encouraged collaboration among the students on homework--less so on labs--reasoning that it would strike a balance between understanding the material and acquiring needed soft skills. Office hours policies were quite liberal: all students were welcome at all TA hours, so if you had an issue with your instructor you could visit the TA and supervisor. Complaints were taken seriously, and underperforming teachers were removed. My reviews were generally good, with the biggest complaints about my language. (I modified my class structure to spend a few minutes on vocabulary each day in response.)
* Some courses are hard enough, and many undergraduates are undisciplined enough, that a lot of students would end up failing. Of course, when this happens, the professor gets a whole bunch of reviews back telling him that he taught badly.
* Sometimes exams aren't the best setting for evaluation.
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